Fluid AI is a startup revolutionizing the artificial intelligence space working with some of the largest banks and corporates.
BWDisrupt interacted with co-founders of Fluid AI, Abhinav and Raghav Aggarwal, who launched their startup recently for their love for technology.
Meet the Minds behind the Startup- Both of them are self-learnt coders and also winners at one of the world’s biggest 24 hour coding competitions, the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in New York.
Raghav dropped out of IIM Ahmadabad and Abhinav dropped ISB Hyderabad, as they both felt that H.R had given them everything they needed to succeed in the business world. Abhinav’s also done his CA and Raghav his international CFA. “Dr. Shahani (H.R’s principal) was a huge inspiration and support for them in college and even now she’s an active advisor. You need mentors like that to succeed,” says Raghav. In fact they created and implemented the entire online LMS and online test system for college when they were in college.
What is the Innovation- Fluid AI offers a way to bring Artificial Intelligence to the real world environment. A solution that can sit on top of a company’s data, intelligently understand it and then apply that learning and make predictions on incoming data. It uses the power of artificial intelligence and deep learning to achieve the same. The Fluid AI can be used for any use case within the organization. So lets say you want to know what offer to give your customer when he's at a mall. Fluid AI based on its learnings of thousands of customers across the bank will know exactly which offer he has the highest propensity to take. It will factor in 100 of input points that the bank has available while making this decision.
Right from the person's age, gender, transaction history, mobile app touch stream data, his account balance, recent life events etc. Fluid AI is a genetically evolving solution, which means that its constantly learning from its decisions and becoming smarter every minute. It updates its evolutionary model every second. This means that when consumer behaviours suddenly change Fluid AI automatically adapts as it learns from its good and bad decisions.
Fluid AI believes that the power of artificial intelligence can be used across industries, sectors and use cases. Our team is working hard to bring about a future where our solutions redefine the landscape of what is possible using AI.
Fluid AI is a fifty person company based out of Indiabulls Finance Centre in Mumbai. Their product has won several global awards and is a never before done approach to bring highly personalized digital interactions to any retail environment.
On the Investment Front- Their company till date has not raised any outside funding but are very profitable and have grown the company from the ground up. They would put back whatever they have earned, back in the business. Using this strong fundamental model they have been able to scale the business to 50 people sitting out of Indiabulls Finance Center in Mumbai.
Challenges Faced In the Course-The biggest challenge they faced during our product development, was getting the input data from the client’s side. Since they wanted to create a hundred thousand data point for the software to better predict the outcome in today’s ever changing and dynamic environment, need to have the data from the clients’ side for input. Initially the clients were unwilling to release these data, but were later on convinced by our amazing tech to comply with us.
Also, they were unable to deploy our tech initially to the real world, to see how it performs and the customer’s reaction and feedback towards it. But as time progressed, they were able to deploy our touch kiosks and touch screens in store to provide customers a never before seen and highly engaging experience.
Future Plans & Ideas:- Right now they are planning to increase our client base and improve our existing relations with clients in India. They are planning to expand more into our already existing customers in the UK, Philippines, Middle East and India, and now we are focusing on entering and expanding into the US market in the upcoming financial year.
They provide customers completely customized software along with hardware (gesture camera and computer pre-loaded with our software) for our solution. They charge their customers a per screen software licence, a one-time software customization cost (if customers require any customisation) and hardware costs for the gesture camera and a box computer on which the software is pre-loaded. Customers can purchase the software licence and gesture camera from us and load the software on their own computer hardware as well.
Some Other Excerpts from the Interview:-
How is it different from existing ones in the same space?We offer a way to bring AI to the retail environment, fundamentally changing the way digital interactions take place in-store in a very natural, engaging way, with a team that has spent years on AI research. A trusted partner to some of the world’s largest companies, to wow customers.
Tell us about the current traction details of your startup? We are currently working with the Top 5 banks in India. We also have many global banks in our cusp a customers like Emirates NBD, Barclays, etc. The major sectors we cater to are Banking. Retail, Hotels, Automotive and Realty
What is the current market size & opportunity, Fluid AI is looking at?The current market size of Artificial Intelligence in 2017 is around US $ 1.2 Billion. Due to the increasing demand for solutions to complex financial problems and healthcare solutions pertaining to clinical trials and related studies, the artificial intelligence market has huge opportunities to flourish in the coming years. The market size of AI is expected to reach US $ 36.8 Billion by the year 2025.
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Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
